It’s a Crappy Job, But Somebody’s Gotta Do It
And I’m not talking about my job! I toured the Vergennes Waste Water Treatment Facility (WWTF) this past Monday. Yeah, where all your sewer pipes lead. Stepping into the 1960’s vintage operations building I was cheerily greeted by Chief Operator Rick Chaput and joined by City Manager Ron Redmond, Vergennes North Project Manager Chris LaPierre, and Senator Steve Heffernan. Having served my first biennium on the House Environment Committee and recently offered a letter of recommendation for federal funding of the proposed “Vergennes North” 74 unit development behind the police station, I wanted to get the real story on the reported treatment plant overflows and actual system capacity. What I learned was very interesting.
As Rick explained, the system has plenty of capacity… on a dry day. The daily flow into the WWTF goes up by a factor of ten times for 3-7 days when it rains heavily, increasing from the normal 300,000 to 3,000,000 gal/day! That's insane! It’s this additional 2.7 million gal/day of rainwater that causes a portion of the system to overflow on the McDonough Drive side of the river in a heavy rain. And yes, a very small fraction of that overflow into the river is mixed with raw sewage, about 1% according to Rick. The six-decades old Vergennes wastewater collection system is so “porous” (lots of cracked underground pipes) that it is essentially acting as a stormwater collection system in addition to a sewage collection system.
The city has already raised nearly $17M of the approximately $45M necessary for a multitude of system upgrades. On May 14 bids open for Phase I and construction will commence in September, 2026. The city continues to work with the Department of Environmental Conservation to bring remedy to the situation and I offered my assistance whenever it’s needed.
In more exciting news, the now famed S.325 bill that repeals the Act 181 Tiers 2 & 3 and Road Rule has passed unanimously in our House Environment Committee, 11-0. It subsequently passed unanimously from the House Appropriations committee and is headed to the House floor for a vote early next week and then back to the Senate to ratify our changes. I am very excited for the relief this bill brings to rural Vermonters all over the state and the new, much more inclusive, Public Outreach process planned for devising mechanisms to protect Vermont’s critical natural resources. This was a monumental feat and largely enabled by the overwhelming voice of the people in opposition to Act 181 coming to fruition. Thank you all who contacted your Representatives!
Also, the Governor signed the H.723 Land Posting bill into law this week making all Posted signs for hunting, fishing, and trapping valid indefinitely. Signs are required to be maintained and the annual fee and recording at the Town Clerk are valid for 1 year from date of recording. This will greatly help our aging population who desire to post their land from having to traverse their entire perimeter every year, and retains clear notice to hunters.
You might ask, what’s the next environmental injustice we need to correct? The answer is Act 59. Act 59 was passed in 2023 by the legislature supermajority and put into law without Governor Scott’s signature. It established the legal goals to permanently conserve 30% of Vermont’s land by 2030 and 50% by 2050, where “permanently” is the operative word. That’s a long time. Vermont has one of the most successful citizen-led environmental protection mechanisms in the US called the Use Value Appraisal (UVA) program, more commonly known as “Current Use”. Vermonters, being very environmentally conscious, have voluntarily opted into this conservation program by enrolling 2.6 million acres of Vermont’s approximately 5.9 million acres of land surface into this program, that’s 44%. The UVA program prevents development of the land, requires adherence to a land conservation management plan, and has stiff penalties to remove it from the plan. As chart 19 from this presentation to our committee by the Vermont Dept of Forest Parks and Recreation shows, the quantity of land in this program has been ONLY INCREASING for the past 30 years without decreasing. In other words, this is an essentially permanent method of conserving land by Vermonters and allowing them to continue to own and steward it for ecological benefits. BUT, the word “permanently” in Act 59 prevents this land from being counted toward the goals! Act 59 conservations consider the UVA land “unconserved”! There is already 27% of Vermont’s land permanently conserved under Act 59, so we’re nearly at the 30% mark, but further progress has largely stalled simply due to market saturation. There’s only a finite amount of land in Vermont and this is making what remains more and more expensive. Of the 2.6 million acres in UVA, 0.5 million is already also permanently conserved in Act 59. If we add these values together we get approximately 60% of Vermont’s land either in UVA or permanently conserved or both. So if we include the UVA land toward Act 59 goals we’re already there! And that’s what the deep-pocketed conservationist backers are concerned about. They would lose their motivating factor to continue to consume more of Vermont’s limited land. Alexsys Thompson has written an excellent article following the money trail on this and our committee took fabulous testimony on this topic. So, the next environmental injustice we need to correct is passing H.70 which simply counts UVA land toward the Act 59 goals.
Governor Scott at his press conference this week refocused us on education saying “I continue to be concerned about the lack of follow through on Education Reform we passed last year in Act 73. Unsustainable property taxes and declining performance are crushing our tax payers and hurting our students.” Mr. “G”, a fifth grade teacher and guest speaker at the Governor’s press conference, was enthusiastic about the opportunities for change and improvement before us. He was emphatic that children thrive best when given choice. “Choice is important… If you ask kids what they would prefer to do, the overwhelming word that will come through is ‘choice’... My dream that I envision is a district with 5 high schools where kids could decide to go to a school where they could focus on topics they are most interested in… There are many teachers out there that feel the same way that I do for the benefit of the teachers and the students.” I highly recommend listening to this entire press conference at the link above. It is enlightening.
Stay tuned and stay engaged.
I remain honored to be your Representative,
Rob North
Addison, Ferrisburgh, New Haven, Panton, Vergennes, and Waltham
